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A Yemeni young man claimed to have found the oldest remaining copy of the Islamic Holy Quran but has refused to give up the manuscript, a report from the Yemeni Arabic news site Aden Gulf News said on Wednesday.

The man has been offered a sum of YR 12 million ($56,000) but he insisted on keeping the manuscript.

The young man said that he found the holy book wrapped inside a leather cover by climbing down a rope to a mountain cave south of the Yemeni city of Dhale.

Initial tests on the authenticity of the manuscript have proven the Quran copy a genuine, marking the copy as the oldest in the world today.

Words that read: “This manuscript was handwritten in 200 hijri year (815 AD)” are engraved on the first page of the manuscript, according to the report.
The Arabic letters used, however, did not have the dots that are included in the Arabic alphabetic, proving that the manuscript dates back to ages ago. The dots were added in a later stage in the Arabic alphabetic to distinguish similar-looking letters.

In addition to finding the Holy Quran manuscript, the young man has also been reported to have found the ‘Dhul Fiqar sword’ believed to be offered as a gift by the Prophet Muhammed to the fourth Caliph Ali bin Abi Talib, who is also his son-in-law.

The Prophet was believed to have lived between 570 AD and 632 AD and the Quran was discovered and introduced to the world between 610 and 632.